2012 Convention Watch

Even the journalists on the liberal NBC, CBS and ABC morning shows had a hard time spinning Barack Obama's acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention. On Friday's Today show, Chuck Todd glumly conceded, "Look, aides acknowledge this wasn't his most poetic speech, not on par with his previous convention speeches and maybe not even the best convention speech of the week." [MP3 audio here. See video below. ]

Todd offered that "because of the hard economic realities, the President decided that had to trump soaring rhetoric." Over on Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos actually refrained from his normally effusive praise of the President. The host acknowledged, "A different kind of convention speech from President Obama last night. More sober, a little more humble." How anxious were the hosts of GMA to get off the subject of the President's speech? The two hour program gave Obama a mere five minutes and 45 seconds.

During the midnight hour of MSNBC's Thursday night Democratic National Convention coverage, host Chris Matthews managed to squeeze in another charge of racism against a black President by "right wingers" as he brought up the birther movement and asserted:

During the midnight hour of MSNBC's Thursday night Democratic National Convention coverage, MSNBC analyst Howard Fineman -- formerly of Newsweek -- declared that it was "brilliant" for President Obama to suggest that Republicans are being "unpatriotic" in trying to make an issue of the economy's poor performance during his time in office.

The Democratic Convention produced a "home run derby of speeches," insisted CNN's John King early Friday morning on Piers Morgan Tonight. This came after CNN hailed Michelle Obama's DNC speech as "probably a grand slam" and Bill Clinton's DNC address as "one of the great modern political speeches I have ever heard."

"But over all, Democrats have to leave this town pretty happy. Still a close election, but Democrats have to leave happy. They had three very good nights, a home run derby of speeches," hyped King.

While the liberal media have noted how little foreign policy was raised at the GOP convention and will surely play up President Obama's attacks on Republican opponent Mitt Romney as being weak on that issue portfolio, it's noteworthy how little media attention is being given to the Democratic Party's views on America's most reliable, democratic ally in the Middle East, Israel.

Even as Democrats on Wednesday afternoon hastily re-added language about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel to their party platform, the document is hardly as pro-Israel as its 2008 iteration, Ben Shapiro of Breitbart's Big Government site noted in a September 6 post. "[T]he full language of the 2008 platform is still gone, Shapiro noted, before quoting the 2008 document's Israel plank and then explaining that:

During early Friday morning’s coverage of the Democratic Convention, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews decided to play a clip of the previous evening's acceptance speech by Barack Obama to demonstrate that he was a “moderate” and “certainly not a socialist.” (video after jump)

During MSNBC’s Thursday night coverage of the Democratic Convention, Melissa Harris-Perry and Chris Matthews decided to further indulge in their unhealthy obsession with birtherism. You may recall that Matthews hijacked Andrea Mitchell’s interview of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ask a question about birtherism during the Republican Convention on August 29. On September 5, Matthews concluded his interview with San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, an alleged rising Democratic star, why there are so many birthers in his state of Texas.

Perry’s birther interjection concerned Obama’s speech dealing with the theme of citizenship. In fact, she called it a “brilliant” moment. However, she made the patently false claim that mainstream Republicans are birther enthusiasts and “redefined” the term herself to convey an overt collectivist idea of citizenship. On the other hand, Matthews, who sat down with Rep. Joseph Crowley and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who declared that the "right wing" wants President Barack Obama's document because "he's black" and doesn't understand why people still don't "get it." Well, it's probably because conspiratorial drivel doesn't go mainstream all that often. (video after the jump)

Not all members of the media offered a "tepid" reaction to President Obama's DNC address. ABC's Jonathan Karl hyped that Obama's crescendo to his speech that the audience loved was "vintage Obama."

"But that last part of the speech was vintage Obama, trying to get these people here, to get the people that drove his campaign, talking about we have providence on our side. They loved it," reported Karl, who added "Tears in the eyes of a lot of these delegates, a lot of tears."

"Absolutely a lucky break," political contributor Matthew Dowd told anchor George Stephanopoulos, insisting that while the Obama campaign "could have filled the stadium... there is no way they could have repeated the energy in this crowd." But meanwhile over on CBS, anchor Scott Pelley showed viewers at home the scene at Bank of America stadium, where "it is dark and there is not a drop of rain falling in the vicinity here in Charlotte. [video follows page break]

On Thursday's Diane Rehm show on NPR stations, NPR political director Ron Elving was truly beside himself in praising the Bill Clinton speech on Wednesday night, going so far that he presumed Democrats said to themselves at every pause for the next gem of wisdom, "What'll that be, Daddy?"

Elving began by oozing "That was about as full-throated, robust and effective, to use your word, a defense of President Obama as I can imagine. I don't know very many people who were seeing it as inadequate last night... frankly, there are things Barack Obama can do as a speaker. We all know that. But he has not been particularly good at his own defense. This was hiring the right attorney at the right time in the right courtroom."

MSNBC graciously broadcasted Republican exile and former Governor of Florida Charlie Crist’s address to the Democratic Convention during their Thursday night coverage. However, that courtesy was not given to Democrat turned Republican former Congressman Artur Davis during the Republican Convention last week.

As my colleague Ken Shepherd noted on August 29, Maddow tore into Davis during what was to be only the post speech commentary and portrayed Davis as “bitter” – thus the event that precipitated his departure from the Republican Party:

Immediately following Bill Plante's declaration on Thursday that Barack Obama is "one of the greatest orators of his generation," CBS This Morning co-anchors Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell conducted an interview with Caroline Kennedy. Instead of discussing her upcoming speech at the Democratic National Convention, they excessively flattered her family and party affiliation.

While reminiscing about the last presidential campaign season, O'Donnell spoke of the transference of "Kennedy magic" to Obama when he received an official endorsement from the former president's daughter and her more recently deceased uncle in 2008. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

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